


of flesh and breath and bone

by CorvidFeathers



Category: Arthurian Mythology, Arthurian Mythology & Related Fandoms
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Character Study, Gen, M/M, Magic, Post-Battle of Camlann
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-25
Updated: 2019-06-25
Packaged: 2020-05-19 10:07:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19354819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CorvidFeathers/pseuds/CorvidFeathers
Summary: Mordred was a spell woven by Morgan le Fay, and now that spell is done.--“Shhh, my child,” she murmurs.  “It’s over.”  You look up, and in her eyes you see not love, nor pride, but satisfaction.  “You have fulfilled your purpose.”Purpose, purpose, purpose.  The word echoes over the surface of the lake, skipping like a stone until it sinks down beneath the waters and all is silent.





	of flesh and breath and bone

**Author's Note:**

> this fic is playing with a pretty wild broad-strokes interpretation of arthurian mythology
> 
> something put into my head the concept of mordred being literally a spell of his mother's, and yet unaware of that, and something about the visceral existential horror of that drove me to write this.
> 
> warning for wildly complicated and dehumanizing parental relationship

Once again, you find yourself on the surface of the dark, lonely lake.

You claw at your chest, your side, expecting your fingers to meet the slickness of bloodied chainmail as your life seeps from you.

Your hands meet only cloth, and beneath it flesh, but it feels nothing like the world felt only a few breaths before.  Nothing so heavy as the touch of iron, of wood, of another’s hand.

Hands close around your shoulders, and you look up into your mother’s face.  

“Shhh, my child,” she murmurs.  “It’s over.” You look up, and in her eyes you see not love, nor pride, but satisfaction.  “You have fulfilled your purpose.”

 _Purpose, purpose, purpose._   The word echoes over the surface of the lake, skipping like a stone until it sinks down beneath the waters and all is silent.

There is a flash of something through your chest, like pain but without _sensation_ , and some part of you begins to unravel into her arms.

“Come home.”  Your mother’s voice is the lake, is all there is.

“Wait,” you gasp.

Your voice does not echo.

“I…” the words stop and fall dead from your tongue, but you know you must keep speaking, that there is nothing more to you than those words and not to speak is to unravel completely.

Her eyes are large, and dark, and familiar as your mind.

“What does this mean?”

Her eyes narrow, and her expression is almost confused.  Something in you knows this is wrong. Your purpose is done; it is not the way of a thing such as you are to cling to the world, not with all its heaviness.  

Your purpose is done, and so are you.

It is not death; it is an ending.  It is the end of a spell woven years before, and you were nothing more than its will.

Your thoughts catch up with what your blood has been singing since you were a child.

You are a scrap of her soul and a plan set in motion and now that plan is done.

Did you breathe, did you sweat, did you bleed as your comrades did?  Did you truly live? Or was it just a part of the spell, an illusion of life so real as to fool even the spell itself?   

 _Come home._   She no longer speaks aloud, for there is no need.

You clench your fists, clinging to the fading sensation of nails against skin, clinging to the memory of the battle, of breath reading from your chest and the sickening knowledge that you were losing, for that is solely your own, for she has never lost.

You were woven of blood and magic, and ambition, ambition, ambition that burned beneath your skin as your blood.  You were fashioned, as a tailor fashions a gown, as a smith fashions a blade, as a sorcerer weaves her craft. Fashioned a warrior, a son, a traitor.

There was more, wasn’t there?

Wasn’t there?

There was the table, and the voices of your comrades raised in argument, raised in song, a glance thrown your way that joined you into something greater than yourself.

There were the moments of exhilaration, back to back with a brother, blood in your mouth and the promise of victory between your teeth.

There was dusk, golden and precious, spent in the high towers with _him_ , waiting for the first breath of the stars.

There was the quiet of the cathedral, his sanctum, and the sense of crossing a threshold into a place that was not your home, but welcomed you all the same with his eyes.  

There was the kisses you shared, in the golden dusk, in the tent of war, bloodied and broken and whole and golden and in love and missing and longing and afraid.

There was the breaths in which you watched him die.

And there was the evils you had done, not because of the thread of ambition that pulled you onwards, onwards, onwards, but because you wanted to, because you could, because breaking things was finally within your power.

The twin threads of love and shame woven through your short life; love for your home, your friends (and for him, the deepest part of you whispers), and shame for what you did to them.   

These things will not (cannot) exist within her.  You can feel them beginning to unravel, the threads of golden dusk and Galahad’s lips coming apart under the pressure of the retreating tide.

“No.”

The word echoes over the still surface of the lake.

“No!”

You were a spell, and your beginning and your end were not your own, but the rest you will not relinquish.

Your name is Mordred and you spent long hours learning the sword under your uncle’s patient eye and you slew a dragon with that sword and you slew your uncle and you shook all the way through the ceremony of your knighting and you didn’t cry when you left home and you lay on the grass of the field with Galahad until the stars rose and you were both chilled to the bones and you thought you could lie there until the heavens fell down to Earth.  You liked nothing better than the feeling of velvet and steel under your fingertips and the first moment you sat at the Round Table you loved your brothers so much it hurt and you never truly believed in God and you never truly believed Galahad was dead and you kissed him just thrice and you hated mulled wine and you bled out and died and it hurt, it hurt, it hurt.

The tide retreats, for she knows her own magic well.

You wake on the field at Camlann, cold and bloody and alone.

**Author's Note:**

> now I have two arthurian mythology fics up and they're wildly different reimaginings of the same relationships.
> 
> this was in a roundabout way inspired by queens of avalon but mostly this one verse framing mordred's death:
> 
> let her take you in her arms/ let her take you home / leave to her the gifts she gave of flesh and breath and bone


End file.
